Indian River Medical Center returning $272,000 in taxpayer money

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Indian River Medical Center will not ask local taxpayers to pay $272,000 for treating a 26-year-old illegal Turkish immigrant found collapsed on the beach and wants a new committee to confidentially examine its future requests to fund charity care for nonresidents.

A letter from IRMC Inc. President Jeff Susi to Dr. Thomas Spackman, chairman of the Indian River County Hospital District, arrived in district offices Friday morning. It said IRMC was returning money it was given last summer, before auditors discovered IRMC had charged taxpayers for the care of a noncounty resident — in violation of hospital district rules.

Susi’s letter said IRMC did not intentionally bend those rules.

“Please be advised,” he wrote, “that while we believe the communication between IRMC and the district personnel to be less than stellar, at no time did IRMC knowingly issue false statements to receive reimbursement from the district.”

District Executive Director Ann Marie Suriano told the Press Journal in a Feb. 8 interview the hospital’s original application for reimbursement stated the patient was a homeless Indian River County resident.

“Also,” Susi wrote, “the subcommittee should be structured to operate confidentially to allow both IRMC and the district to function within the parameters of the state and federal privacy laws.”

Susi has declined Press Journal requests to say whether an illegal immigrant is covered by such privacy laws.

But Florida’s Government in the Sunshine laws do make it a crime for hospital district trustees, who levy property taxes, to meet privately or deny requests for public records.

IRMC, a nonprofit corporation that operates the publicly owned hospital, is exempt from those Sunshine laws. Instead, it pledges to hold open meetings and make nonpatient records accessible to the public in its lease of the hospital. District trustees, as IRMC’s landlords, would have to enforce those provisions.

Susi has cited patient confidentially in declining to say whether IRMC considered trying to have the man deported.

On Friday, Susi said that “many times” a patient initially appears qualified for hospital district funding, only to be later disqualified.

“In this case, when additional information became available, the hospital unilaterally decided not to pursue additional funding and return the ($272,000) that had already been received,” he wrote in an email.

Spackman said Friday that hospital district trustees haven’t decided whether to form the confidential subcommittee Susi suggested.

“But I think, probably, yes,” Spackman said. “In the last (public) chairman’s meeting when this was discussed, there was a concern on the part of the trustees, and I think the hospital as well, that there was a breakdown of communication.”

The letter arriving Friday does not refer to the patient by name, age or nationality.

But it is apparent in a memo from an IRMC case manager — made public earlier this month when given to the hospital district — that the $272,000 bill was for treatment of an “illegal immigrant from Turkey.”

Also, the case was discussed at a Feb. 5 public meeting of hospital district trustees and IRMC officials.

The man’s arrival in town is documented in a report by Indian River Shores Public Safety. Its officers went to the beach in the 5500 block of State Road A1A the morning of June 13, 2011. They found a 20-foot boat stuck at the water’s edge and a man laying in the sand nearby.

Public Safety Chief Robbie Stabe said investigators determined the boat had been stolen in the Bahamas and brought into the United States by another person who made a call on a borrowed cellphone and disappeared.

The case was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The injured man, who spoke no English, was rushed to IRMC. There, according to the case management memo, it was discovered he had a spinal cord injury.

According to the memo, he is paralyzed and has infected bed sores. But the hospital has not been unable to find a skilled nursing facility to accept the man and his hospital bills have been mounting.

Trustees told their attorney, Jennifer Peshke, to meet with IRMC attorney Valerie Larcombe to discuss whether an exception could be made to allow IRMC to keep the $272,000. Spackman said the Feb. 15 letter from Susi to him “is basically a product of that conversation.”

The county’s hospital district levies about 97 cents per $1,000 taxable property value and spends about $12 million a year on programs to promote health. The largest portion of that money goes to reimburse IRMC for medical care it gives low-income, uninsured county residents.